Then, Jesus went up to Jerusalem for a Jewish festival. There is a pool named Bethesda near the Sheep Gate. There are five colonnades there that shelter many people who are sick. People who are blind, lame, and paralyzed wait there for the rare times when an angel stirs up the waters. The first person who gets into the water after the angel had stirred it up is healed from whatever sickness he had.

One of the men there had been sick for 38 years. When Jesus saw him he knew that he had been waiting there a long time to be healed. He asked him “Do you want to get well?”

The man replied “Sir, I don’t have anyone to put me in the pool when the water is stirred up. Someone always gets in ahead of me while I am trying to get there.” Jesus told him “Get up, pick up your sleeping mat, and walk.”

Since that day was the Sabbath, the Jewish leaders said to the man “It’s illegal for you to carry your mat on the Sabbath!” He replied, “The man who healed me told me ‘Pick up your sleeping mat and walk.’”

The leaders pressed further, asking “Who is it that told you to pick up your sleeping mat and walk?” The man didn’t know who it was because Jesus had slipped away into the crowd.

Jesus found the man in the Temple complex later and told him “Now that you are well, don’t sin anymore or something worse might happen to you.”

The man then went and reported to the Jewish leaders that it was Jesus who had healed him.

JN 5:1-15